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Thursday, March 25, 2010

On "This Foolishness": Silence Gives Consent

by

Abby Zimet

The health care/Tea Party insanity has made it clear, if it wasn't before, that there are alot of angry, unbalanced, ill-informed people abroad in a land whose changes they feel powerless to stop. Hence, the cut gas lines, faxed nooses, coffins on lawns, calls for snipers and cancers, and warnings, from the same militia leader who called for breaking thousands of Commie windows, that "rifles are being cleaned." These guys are scary. Are these guys dangerous? That depends, as with a kid throwing a tantrum, on the response. The GOP's militaristic language, complete with Palin's target-embossed map, is both complicit, and revealing to anyone who somehow believed they would never go quite this appallingly low. Silly us. They have. It's time, says House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC),
for leaders to "come together and tamp this foolishness down."

"I have seen this before," said Clyburn. "These kinds of things
happen when people in positions of authority do not do what they can do to
tamp this down...We are giving aid and comfort to these people."

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Further

While waiting alongside other administration officials and lawmakers before a scheduled event at the White House on Thursday morning, a live video stream captured what appeared to be billionaire capitalist and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross scraping something from the corner of his eye and then putting it in his mouth. Seemed like an eye booger, but impossible to know for sure. Pretty sure U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross just ate an eye booger on national television. No big deal, but...

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